Rotherham Council has approved plans for an extension to the head office of Pulse &
Cocktails at the Canklow site.

The chain opened its first store in 1997 and has expanded to over 20 stores across the UK.

The current flagship store opened at Canklow in 2003 where the 10,000 sq ft premises also includes the firm's head office and storage area. With 7,000 sq ft of retail space and selling 8,000 different products, the Rotherham branch was reported to
be the biggest sex shop in Europe when it opened, and the second biggest in the world after the Hustler store in California.

Now a planning application has been approved that will enable the company to add an additional 4,300 sq ft of floor space for warehousing and offices.

One of the biggest sex shops in Essex has opened its doors on the A12 near Chelmsford and Witham .

Store manager Hannah beamed:

A lot of thought has gone into the design and the products we offer. It's spacious and modern and welcoming. Our lingerie is classy and we have a real mixture of products and toys to suit all tastes. You can go from a simple tickler to something
more fetish.

New employees at Pulse & Cocktails have a whole month's training before they can start work in the stores. They learn about every single product in detail and about how to deliver the best customer service in an adult store.

It is located on just off the A12 northbound at Rivenhall End, near Witham in Essex. The store used to be home to Empire Diner.

A spokesman for Pulse and Cocktails said:

We are delighted to be opening in Essex, in the time we have been in the area getting the store ready we have found the local people to be amazing, really friendly and helpful and we have only received words of encouragement from everyone we have
come into contact with. We cannot wait to open the doors and hope the store is a successful as our other ex-Little Chefs.

The Rivenhall store will become the 24th shop in the Pulse and Cocktails chain.

Lap dancing clubs, sex shops and sex cinemas numbers in England have fallen by a third in the past five years.

The BBC England Data Unit sent Freedom of Information requests to all local councils responsible for issuing sex establishment licences with 281 out of 327 responding to how many they had issued. The total number of ex establishment licences
issued by councils dropped from 386 in 2013 to 256 in 2018.

The figures reveal the number of sex establishment licences rose between 2011 and 2013 as lap dancing clubs had to apply for new licences after the introduction of the Police and Crime Act 2009. Previously, such clubs had been regulated under laws
designed to control pubs and nightclubs. Since 2013 the number of active licences has declined every year.

The data supplied by local authorities shows no major city in England has seen an increase in the number of sexual entertainment licences since 2013.

They also suggest the number of active licences has fallen by two-thirds in London. The local authority area of Westminster which takes in Soho, an area synonymous with the British sex industry, has seen the biggest fall in the number of active
licences, from 31 in 2013 to four at the beginning of 2018.

But all 26 jobs at the business were saved after the business was sold to new company Nice N Naughty (UK). The new company is controlled by Simon Prescott, who was director of the previous Nice N Naughty Leisurewear.

In 2016 there was a decrease in the number of explicit pornographic works submitted to the BBFC. The 476 works in 2016 represents
an a 19% decrease on 2015, ending the trend of year-on-year increases that had taken place over the preceding three years.

The proportion of R18works subject to cuts in 2016 was 35%, an increase of 22% over the previous year. This continues to reflect the BBFC's strict policies on material which combines sexual detail with activity which is
illegal, harmful, abusive or involves a lack of consent or the infliction of pain or injury. [The BBFC have misleadingly omitted some of the more trivial reasons for cuts from this list, such as use of the word teen, dialogue
references to incest, squirting and gagging].